The most popular and comprehensive Open Source ECM platform
Let us know more
BYOD and Security: Balancing the Risks and Rewards
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a policy that increasingly businesses are finding that they need to support, but one that comes with challenge and risk. Gartner calls Mobile Device Diversity and Management as one of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014.
Most companies are aware of the risks that a BYOD policy can bring. A survey by Kensington found that 73 percent of organizations say that they allowing BYOD significantly increases risks. A CheckPoint survey found that 87 percent of employers thought that employees with policies like BYOD bring a greater risk to their business than hackers.
Ram Kalyan Medury, CIO of Magma Fincorp, thinks BYOD policies may be premature. “The very usage of the term appears to indicate huge potential security issues! Each application may have its own security vulnerabilities before you even prefix ‘BYO-‘ to it! CIOs and CISOs as it is, have their hands full, finding and plugging vulnerabilities in their existing application portfolios.”
But despite the perceived risks, 59 percent of businesses still say that they allow personal devices to be used for business. Among small businesses, 90 percent say that their employees bring at least one personal device to work. Many businesses point to benefits that a BYOD policy can bring, like greater productivity, innovation and employee satisfaction.
As a result, security products to help securely enable BYOD policies are hot now. Research firm Technavio estimates that the global BYOD security market will grow at an annual rate of 35 percent now through 2019.
Juliette Rizkallah, Check Point’s vice president of global marketing, told eWEEK, that “BYOD continues to grow at a fast clip—no longer can organizations say we aren’t doing BYOD. I think businesses realize that they need a long-term strategy around BYOD and are trying to assess which mobile solution blends best with their overall security infrastructure.”
